MSS: Susan Braman

Susan Braman, the manager of the new Greensboro Aquatic Center, joins today's edition of The Morning Swim Show to talk about the success of acquiring several top-flight competitions in only a few months.
Braman talks about some of the events that will be held at the North Carolina facility in the coming months, the successful U.S. Olympic synchronized swimming trials held there recently and what the facility offers for visitors.

Show Transcript: (Note: This is an automated service where some typos and grammatical errors may occur.)

Jeff Commings: This is the Morning Swim Show for Monday, December 5th, 2011. I'm your host Jeff Commings. And today in the FINIS Monitor we'll talk with Susan Braman. She's the manager of the new Greensboro Aquatic Center, which is making a big name for itself after being opened just a little over two months. Susan Braman joins us right now from Greensboro, North Carolina. Hi, Susan, how are you doing today?

Susan Braman: Very good. Good morning.

Jeff Commings: And welcome to the Morning Swim Show.

Susan Braman: Thank you.

Jeff Commings: So the Greensboro Aquatic Center has only been open for about two and a half months yet, you've already lined up by my count 50 championship meets. Now, how did you guys manage to pull that off?

Susan Braman: I think that shows the need that we had here in Greensboro, North Carolina, for taking care of the swimming teams and the swimming meets that were out there and the club programs. We just built it and they came.

Jeff Commings: So when you talk about need, was there a demand in the area to, you know, draw a lot this kind of events to Greensboro?

Susan Braman: Absolutely, there was. And it took the efforts of some of the long standing clubs in our community such as Greensboro Swim Association and Star Aquatics and their long standing coaches and administrators worked with us two design and build this because they were experiencing that and they were out growing some of the small pools and had no place to call home really to host a big meet.

Jeff Commings: Now, you just had your first big meet, the Synchro U.S. Olympic Trials. Tell us how that went.

Susan Braman: That was a very exciting event. It's a wonderful spectator sport for the Greensboro Aquatic Center and part of its design. We have over 1900 seats in our upstairs grandstand sitting areas, so it made for a very exciting event for us to see those grandstands filled up and our beautiful big score board. We filmed all the girls in their shows. And it's just very exciting event for us to be so young and to host an Olympic Trial already, which I understand was one of the first Olympic Trials being held around the country to choose our 2012 athletes. So we were honored and just pleased as could be to host that event and certainly have our sights set on other Olympic trials for swimming moving forward.

Jeff Commings: Well, that will be really big draw moving in a way from Omaha which is where it's gonna be next year to Greensboro. Now with the Synchro Olympic trials being your first big competition there at Greensboro, I would imagine, did you have probably a few glitches or did it go off pretty much as well as planned?

Susan Braman: You know, it did go off as planned because there was great deal of planning for it. And it's so different than the swimming meets, you know, the set up with Synchro is just so different. That -- there was a lot more focus on production with the synchronized swimming, the sounds, the music, cueing all that up. We did just two weeks ago host our largest swimming meet thus far with our local team, Greensboro Swim Association. We had 402 participants swimming. We broke our first state record in the men's 100 breaststroke. Daniel Lee with GSA did that. So that was very exciting for us. That's called the John Dewey meet that they had been hosting and kind of outgrew their previous facility. So we had over a thousand spectators associated with that meet. And we're looking forward to a meet this weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday that has 420 participant swimmers. So we're growing each week with our meets and we're looking forward to hosting sectional meets which, as you know, are gonna bring in participants from several states. We have an age group sectional coming up and a senior sectional. So we continue to grow with the two-course meets and the numbers are getting up, nearly 800 for some of those events.

Jeff Commings: Now, what's amazing to me is that so many organizations came to you pretty much immediately as without even seeing you guys put on a meet, you know, not being able to see how you guys could run it, but having seen the pictures I can imagine they just fell in love with the facility right away. Was that the case?

Susan Braman: Well, yes, that's the case and because of our location on the property of the Greensboro Coliseum and their outstanding history as tournament town in Greensboro. That was an automatic asset to us coz they know that the ACC, for instance, the NCAA, they host -- have hosted events there for years and they know that kind of service that we're gonna be providing. So this has just become an extension of what everyone who's experienced those events and come into the coliseum know that they're gonna get at the Greensboro Aquatic Center as well. So we have a great relationship with them when we host a meet that we automatically have event services and housekeeping and setup and it's just a nice place to be right next to all those services and to be able to work together on a meet.

Jeff Commings: What sets the Greensboro Aquatic Center apart from other state of the art pools?

Susan Braman: Well, you know, what I was just talking about with the relationship on the property of the Greensboro Coliseum. We have 6,000 parking spaces for instance surrounding us. And that's something you don't see at too many of the Aquatic Centers and, in addition, the whole event services that we talked about, just being able to put on a very professional event and having our event staff there, just makes it a -- it just keeps it professional as it is in the coliseum and hosting events and it's -- Greensboro, North Carolina, is proving to be a great location for the swimming world. It's amazing how many people have contacted us and we're working with to bring other swimming championships into this area.

Jeff Commings: Now you have -- this is not your first time being a manager of a big swimming facility. You were also manager of the International Swimming Hall of Fame Pool which has hosted each year major national and international meets. What lessons did you learn from your time there that you have already or will be bringing to your new job there in Greensboro?

Susan Braman: Well, you know, one of the things in Fort Lauderdale is -- that was different was when I was the manager of the Hall of Fame, we had two pools. And as we got involved in the Greensboro Aquatic Center and I've been involved since the consulting stage on the design, it was important to us in the design stages to go with the three pools. And I think, again, that's something that separates us from a lot of Aquatic Centers. Of course, now Fort Lauderdale does have that third pool and, as a result, they were able to bring in a lot more meets than the -- and larger meets than they would have throughout the time that I have managed. But having three different vessels of water really, really sets us apart from a majority of Aquatic Centers and allows us to not only host the diving and a swimming meet together, for instance, but also in a third pool to conduct business as usual if you will, our lap swimming for our public. Our learn to swim programs can take place. We have a beautiful store front of glass and doors that separate one of the pools from the other two and we have a second set of locker rooms, men's and women's that just service that pool. And it's proving to be so beneficial to us to conduct business as usual, if you will, throughout different meets and practice times and then allow, you know, the swimming component and the diving well and the diving team practices all just to take place at the same time.

Jeff Commings: Well, it looks everything is headed in the right direction, Susan. Congratulations on a great first two and a half months. And I'm sure everything would just pick up with all these meets you got going on; just to mention a few, you got the Atlantic Coast Conference Championships, got Master Swimming Nationals next year. I can't imagine that, you know, U.S.A. swimming won't be coming to you guys soon and saying we'd like to have the Olympic trials. So best of luck to you guys and thanks for joining us today.

Susan Braman: Thank you so much.

Jeff Commings: All right, that's Susan Braman joining us from the Greensboro Aquatic Center in North Carolina. That's gonna do it for today's show. I'm Jeff Commings. Thanks for watching.